Louisville Process Theology Network

Heinz R. Pagels on Our Experience of Science I

Jun 17, 2009

From Page 99 of the ?“The Cosmic Code?” by Heinz R. Pagels.


?“?… the abstract mathematical character of the quantum theory does not relate to human experience. The quantum theory is a theory of an instrumentally detected material reality ?– there is an apparatus between the material observer and the atom. Heisenberg commented ?… ?‘Science sacrifices more and more the possibility of making living the phenomena perceptible by our senses, but only lays bare the mathematical, formal nucleus of the process.?’

Science does not deny the reality of our immediate experience of the world; it begins there. But, it does not remain there because the basis for comprehending our experience is not given with sensual experience. Science shows that supporting the world of sensual experience there is a conceptual order, a cosmic code which can be discovered by experiment and known by the human mind.

The unity of our experience, like the unity of science, is conceptual, not sensual?… Science is a response to the demand that our experience places upon us, and what we are given in return by science is a new human experience ?– seeing with our mind the internal logic of the cosmos.

The discovery of the indeterminate universe by quantum physicists is an example. The end of determinism meant not the end of physics but the beginning of a new vision of reality.?”